IFFR Announces recipients of the Canon Tiger Awards 2015

44th International Film Festival Rotterdam
21st January – 1st February, 2015

IFFR ANNOUNCES RECIPIENTS OF THE CANON TIGER AWARDS 2015

DANE KOMLJEN’S ‘OUR BODY’ NOMINATED FOR EFA SHORT FILM COMPETITION

Rotterdam, 25th January 2015:
The jury for the Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films has completed its deliberation and announced THINGS by Ben Rivers, LA FIEVRE by Safia Benhaim and GREETINGS TO THE ANCESTORS by Ben Russell as the winners of The Canon Tiger Awards 2015. The three winning directors each receive a 3,000 Euro prize plus a professional digital video camera from Canon. The Jury also selected OUR BODY by Dane Komljen (Serbia/Germany) to compete in the short film category of the European Film Awards (EFA) later this year. The awards ceremony took place this evening, Sunday, January 25th at 9 pm at IFFR festival venue LantarenVenster. Ben Rivers is a previous winner of the Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films with AH, LIBERTY! in 2008 and Ben Russell competed for the Hivos Tiger Award at IFFR in 2010.

The jury for the Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films was comprised of British artist, filmmaker and two-time winner of this award Beatrice Gibson, Dutch programmer and curator Xander Karskens, and artistic director of Image Forum Festival Koyo Yamashita from Japan. On making their decision, of THINGS, the jury commented “We chose this film, for its exquisite crafting and ambitious approach to the personal and the diarystic. For its toilet-humour, and the way in which the filmmaker successfully collapses style and rhythm.” LA FIEVRE was a worthy winner “For its poetic and human use of images and sounds to engage with complex political histories. Its feverish pace and arresting cinematography. Its ominous, hallucinogenic soundtrack.” GREETINGS TO THE ANCESTORS was singled out “For its complex approach to ethnographic filmmaking, its sensuous psychedelia, its self-reflexive and intricate weaving of voice and landscape.”

The jury selected OUR BODY as their nomination the European Film Awards nomination “For its raw and direct confrontation with its own subject. Its interweaving of the literary and the philosophical, and compelling juxtaposition of the gentle and the abrupt.”


Canon Tiger Awards For Short Films:

THINGS by Ben Rivers (United Kingdom)
Synopsis:
THINGS is Ben Rivers’ 14th film at IFFR since his 2007 debut. Full of eclipses, encounters, illusions and magic, the film is founded in uncertainty concerning home. It’s a fitting departure, but similarly to previous films, gives freedom to meander, reflect and make our own discoveries. A four seasons’ fable, a kaleidoscope of intimate and non-intimate details comes to the fore in THINGS, perplexing us, intriguing us and urging us to watch again.
About the director:
Ben Rivers studied at Falmouth School of Art and was co-founder of the Brighton Cinematheque. In 2008, AH LIBERTY! won a Tiger Award for Short Films in Rotterdam. His first feature film, TWO YEARS AT SEA (2011), won the FIPRESCI Award at the Venice Film Festival. In 2014, Rivers joined the year-long project STAY WHERE YOU ARE, a group of four award-winning artists and writers who created work on a single theme: their home environment.

LA FIEVRE by Safia Benhaim (France)
Synopsis:
One feverish night a girl meets the spirit of a woman returning from lengthy political exile. Together they travel across Morocco, searching for a home that disappeared and a forgotten childhood. Lost memories and the history of decolonisation and political conflict re-emerge in cinematic hallucinations, but then the past is overrun by a new wave of resistance, Morocco's Arab Spring.
About the director:
Safia Benhaim is a filmmaker who was educated, lives and works in Paris. As a child of Moroccan political refugees, her body of work focuses on the theme of exile. Her films lie on the intersection of documentary and science fiction.

GREETINGS TO THE ANCESTORS by Ben Russell (USA/South Africa/United Kingdom)
Synopsis:
GREETINGS TO THE ANCESTORS is Ben Russell's 18th film at IFFR since 2002 and the final part in THE GARDEN OF EARTHLY DELIGHTS, a trilogy examining the ecstatic limits of utopia in the present. Set between Swaziland and South Africa, in a region still struggling with the divisions produced by an apartheid government, GREETINGS TO THE ANCESTORS documents the dream lives of the territory’s inhabitants as the borders of consciousness dissolve and expand.
About the director:
Ben Russell makes films, performances and installations. He prefers to screen his work in unconventional places, such as monasteries, police-station basements and Japanese film-rental shops. His fields of interest range from anthropology to experimental film. After the many short films he shot in Suriname, he made his first long work, LET EACH ONE GO WHERE HE MAY, nominated for a Tiger Award in IFFR 2010. The highly productive filmmaker lives alternately in the USA and Europe.

Rotterdam nomination for European Film Awards:

OUR BODY, by Dane Komljen (Serbia/Germany)
Synopsis:
Director Komljen opens the door to the world of contrasts that OUR BODY consists of with a bang. The accompanying image would also suit the end of the film once the endless cleaning of the body proves to be no guarantee against unavoidable decline. OUR BODY is a metaphor for the impossibility of a clean modernism as long as it is to be maintained by humans, yet however destructive time's influence, the mind will survive.
About the director:
Dane Komljen was educated in film directing at the Faculty of Dramatic Arts of the University of Arts in Belgrade. After his studies he made a video installation in Serbia and short films in Bosnia and Croatia. Currently, Komljen is following a Master's study in contemporary art at Le Fresnoy, France.

Full line-up Tiger Awards Competition for Short Films 2015
BIBLE by Tommy Hartung (USA)
BLINDER by Tim Leyendekker (the Netherlands, Brazil)
LA FIEVRE by Safia Benhaim (France)
GREETINGS TO THE ANCESTORS by Ben Russell (USA, South Africa, United Kingdom)
THE LIVING NEED LIGHT, THE DEAD NEED MUSIC by The Propeller Group (Vietnam)
MAINSQUEEZE by Jon Rafman (Canada)
THE MAIN COLORS OF THE SKY RADIATE FORGETFULNESS by Basim Magdy (Egypt)
MOON BLINK by Rainer Kohlberger (Austria)
NIGHT SOIL – FAKE PARADISE by Melanie Bonajo (USA, the Netherlands)
OUR BODY by Dane Komljen (Serbia, Germany)
PANCHROME I, II, III by T. Marie (USA)
QUIET ZONE by Karl Lemieux (Canada)
RAKING LIGHT by James Richards (Germany)
RAYMOND by Nina Yuen (USA)
SWIMMING IN YOUR SKIN AGAIN by Terence Nance (USA)
THINGS by Ben Rivers (United Kingdom)
TIJD EN PLAATS, EEN GESPREK MET MIJN MOEDER by Martijn Veldhoen (the Netherlands)
UNTITLED (THE CITY AT NIGHT) by Ane Hjort Guttu (Norway)
VOICE-OVER by Roy Villevoye (the Netherlands)
YOU’RE DEAD TO ME by Min-Wei Ting (Singapore)

International Film Festival Rotterdam (IFFR) offers a high quality line-up of carefully selected fiction and documentary feature films, short films and media art. The festival's Tiger Awards Competitions, Bright Future, Spectrum and Limelight sections contain new work by auteurs from all over the world including many World Premieres. In the Signals section, IFFR presents retrospectives and themed programmes. IFFR actively supports new and adventurous filmmaking talent through numerous industry initiatives including co-production market CineMart, its Hubert Bals Fund and Rotterdam Lab.

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